by Qiu Miaojin
8
After the Crocodile Club incident, everyone caught Crocodile Fever. Once the citizens’ bureau confirmed a firsthand sighting, crocodile-related news went from wild and wacky conjectures to the fruits of legitimate scholarship and research. Crocodile coverage took the place of “DIANA JOINS BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY” as the lead story on the front page, bumping Diana to the full-page special-feature slot previously occupied by “WILL HUMANS EVER EVOLVE?” On any given day, individuals set out in every direction with one urgent mission: to hunt down crocodiles. There was an un-spoken rule that crocodile-related information was to be exchanged only in private. No one mentioned it in public, lest crocodiles be frightened away. Everyone was on high alert as they searched for the slightest evidence of a crocodile, remaining convinced that crocodiles had no idea humans were on the lookout for them.
Various crocodile experts had begun to crop up. Every day in the papers there was a new crocodile-related article written by a PhD. A tenured professor signed on to host Focus on Crocodiles, a TV program that featured leading authorities on genetic engineering, developmental psychologists, officials from the Ministry of the Interior, and legal scholars. One such genetic-engineering expert, who had obtained the cells of crocodiles for research purposes, argued that crocodiles and humans were two distinct species that could, through the processes of evolution, form a new type of human, forecasting an eighty percent chance of a hybrid species through mating.
From the standpoint of the developmental psychologists, crocodiles were an aberrant species. In accordance with their discipline’s understanding of crocodile families, their research indicated distinct differences from humans at every stage of development from birth to puberty as well as in maturity, though details had yet to be ascertained. There was a general consensus, however, that up to the age of fourteen, crocodiles adopted a homemade “human suit” before running away from home. While exact causes remained unknown, scholars cited societal attitudes as a factor in crocodile mutation, suggesting that there was no means of preventing an increase in the number of emergent crocodiles, which would ultimately contribute to a broader societal trend toward a full-fledged crocodile ecology and genetic mutation.
The legal scholars asserted that in order to protect the native civilization, traditions, and social order of the past five thousand years, advance revisions of labor laws, property laws, marriage laws, et cetera, were needed to restrict the crocodile race to designated occupations in the tourism and service industries. Additional taxes were also proposed lest crocodiles drain societal resources, along with the enactment of explicit measures to prohibit marriage between humans and crocodiles. An official of the Ministry of the Interior made a televised announcement that the Alliance for the Protection of Crocodiles was growing in popularity and holding daily demonstrations in Taipei to pressure the federal legislature to meet its demands for crocodile protection statutes. The alliance also advocated the legal creation of crocodile ecotourism zones to prevent extinction. The ministry official reiterated that the constitution contained a provision ensuring crocodiles the right to exist.
One month later, the Bureau of Health and Sanitation published the results of a secret study. According to the bureau, which tracked a Crocodile Club event on December 24th attended by sixty active members, within a month, five percent of those in attendance had experienced a dermatological problem—their skin had turned red in places and sprouted dense patches of black specks. The body hair of those subjects was examined under a high-power microscope, revealing the presence of tiny ova-shaped specimens. A bureau spokesman issued the following conclusions: The tiny spawns were the product of a toxin secreted by the crocodiles; as an oviparous species, crocodiles produced spawns, which were agents of reproduction; a new organism was produced not through sexual intercourse per se but through the discharge of a spawn that entered the human body and transformed the host into a new crocodile.
People were stunned. A huge uproar ensued.
The Alliance for the Protection of Crocodiles and the Anti-Crocodile Coalition (known respectively as Pro-Croc and Anti-Croc) held a televised national debate, with three networks providing joint prime-time coverage at six p.m.
“As controversial as research on crocodiles may be, there is no doubt whatsoever that crocodile spawns are not pure human beings. Because they are 99.9 percent different from humans, or those of us who constitute the majority, they are abnormal. Is everyone here willing to accept the risk of mutation as a product of social intercourse? Are you prepared for a future in which we, as a society, are completely transformed into crocodiles?” Anti-Croc asked.
“But Anti-Croc, you’ve never even seen a crocodile before. How can you start talking about what kind of influence crocodiles will have on the future of society?” Pro-Croc said.
“Oh, don’t tell me that crocodiles don’t have enough influence on society as it is. Haven’t there been eyewitness sightings of crocodiles? The phenomenon of deviant crocodile spawns is an established fact. How else has society become this unstable? I can just imagine how crocodiles look with their human suits on. What horrifying creatures, with those specks growing all over their red skin. Just the thought of something that looks like a human producing spawns makes me sick,” Anti-Croc said.
“But even if crocodiles emerge from human beings, that doesn’t mean we all harbor the same potential to become crocodiles. The actual chances are slim. What makes you think otherwise?” Pro-Croc said.
“Crocodiles are not humans,” Anti-Croc said.
“According to you, all crocodiles should be preemptively thrown in jail, just in case you have a child who might become a crocodile. What if you suddenly woke up one day to find that you’d turned into a crocodile, what would you do then?” Pro-Croc said.
“That would never happen. I would discipline my child or I would turn myself in. And you?” Anti-Croc said.
“Actually, we have a collective goal, which is to protect crocodiles and to allow them to subsist naturally. But because society poses a threat to crocodiles, we need to provide some safeguards for them, which is why we’ve compiled a registry of crocodiles so they can be gathered in designated tourism zones, monitored and protected in the event of a large-scale disaster, and serve as sample specimens, as a practical measure to prevent public interference,” said Pro-Croc.
The following day, the Bureau of Health and Sanitation and federal law-enforcement authorities issued a joint statement: “Effective today, we have designated this month as National Crocodile Month in order to give crocodiles nationwide an opportunity to turn themselves over to the registrars of the Bureau of Health and Sanitation or the National Police Agency, to whom crocodiles must provide their names, which will be made public. Scheduling of treatment and a pledge of compliance will also be undertaken at that time. Any late registrants who are discovered will be subject to penalties, which will be administered separately.”
NOTEBOOK #8
1
On how to love well: Instead of embracing a romantic ideal, you must confront the meaning of every great love that has shattered, shard by shard.
2
Shui Ling lived on in my heart. Like a pendulum swinging toward me, memories of her surfaced from the darkest recesses of my mind, blurring with reality one moment and vanishing like a dream the next, leaving stillness in their wake. . . .
December 16, 1989
Shui Ling, it’s my second day in Penghu. I waited until the most spectacular moments of sunset were over, then headed to the balcony of my hotel room with my journal and a clear, sober heart. I wanted to sit at a round white table, inspired by the fast-fading colors as the darkness enveloped the sky. With the last remaining sliver of orange light on the horizon beyond the murky waters, I found myself unable to witness the end of a thing whose beauty was never realized.
The sea shrouded in blackness, the stirring sounds of night, and the ocean breeze—elements of an all-too-familiar scene, aren’t they? I saw the dimly lit sea
yesterday, and that’s when it sank in. But here I am, gazing sentimentally at the green light reflected on the water’s surface, savoring what time is left before it goes out.
Every time we spoke, I bungled the opportunity. My words ran amok. My most volatile parts surfaced. I tried to tell you in a letter but gave up trying to finish. I tossed and turned all night, unable to escape the awful din inside my head. I couldn’t get out of bed or make myself clean the house. I couldn’t put a pen to paper. That’s the state I was in for two months. I didn’t tell you, but I was worried about myself.
I ran off to Penghu. My defenses weakened, I watched helplessly as my brigade was decimated. But still I pushed forward with the flag raised high, flapping in the wind, refusing to surrender.
December 28, 1989
You punished me by making me wait. What was I willing to wait so long for? I waited for a breakthrough in honesty, for you to say that your love for me had an ultimate meaning. I was in desperate search of some sort of connection.
In the end, it wasn’t love. We could love, and love would leave us, or we couldn’t love, and love wouldn’t leave us. That was the ultimate meaning. Blessing or curse, there was no escaping it. All I could do was learn to play the hand I’d been dealt, knowing that the profundity of my life experiences would rest on my ability to formulate a plot.
I waited for you though you weren’t the one, and succeeded only in hurting and debasing myself.
January 3, 1990
On holding grudges. According to the Dalai Lama, one pursues the noble life not to depart from this world but to accept those who will depart from it. And so I vow never to revisit my journals from those days.
This pain has left me feeling worn and empty—unable to refrain from these effusions, unsure of how to mend the gaping hole in me, unable to reach the place that Haruki Murakami described: “Six years during which time I’d laid three cats to rest. Burned how many aspirations, bundled up how much suffering in thick sweaters, and buried them in the ground. All in this fathomlessly huge city Tokyo.” I don’t know how to dig myself out of the rut I’m in, and the pain, which comes in paroxysms, tears away at my mind.
April 19, 1990
Shui Ling, this separation has to be. Four months later, I’m in a completely different place. I thought long and hard about romantic fantasies and shattered loves. I cried for days on end. I put all the time and energy I had into finding closure, making sure that you’d never again be a part of my life. I wanted you to fade into the past so that I could mourn. So I gave myself a bloodletting, replaying hurtful words from our time together over and over in my heart. Our breakup was not the most beautiful memory, but this time, it was the best.
Passion alone is never enough. That was my biggest lesson. As a first year, as a third year, and even now, I could never give you stability. Love, however beautiful, always comes at a great cost to the future, don’t you think?
Unhealthy love is two people stoking a shared fantasy of desperate beauty, weaponizing passion and desire. Real life is filled with twists and turns, changes, recurrences. Before you even know it, you’ve become a deluded romantic who denies the consequences of time or destroys the very thing that they love. It’s funny how the only time I’m not hypersensitive is when I’m breaking up with someone. Then again, we brought out the ugliness in each other, as if hatred was the seed of our love.
I don’t want to be close to you again. Our fighting knows no end. I want you to shatter the illusions I created, and go out and love someone else. Don’t love too much but don’t fail to love, either. Love prudently. Love realistically, just enough to treat someone well. Though you don’t love me anymore, relationship or not, I want you to be well now and always. I want you to love someone else, even if it hurts me.
Part of me has been secretly hoping that good things do last forever, but it’s time to renounce that hope. I looked across the water, and as my tears fell, I told myself: “You can’t hold on to a beautiful thing forever—not in your memory, not even if you keep loving it. If you tried, it would only die in your possession. Beauty must be free to run its course.” I decided to free you from my heart in a gesture that is nothing short of poignant, for beauty belongs to no one and must be relinquished to the eternal.
The deeper you love, the deeper your compassion grows and the more you realize that the other suffers just as you do. When all is said and done, human civilization is ugly and cruel, and the only thing to do is to raze it to the ground, and that’s because kindredness is the one true constant between you and anyone else. The best way for any relationship to end is with the sentiment I wish the best for you, and I am grateful for what we once had together.
July 13, 1990
Shui Ling, tonight I’m moving in with Xiao Fan and starting a new life in which reality comes first. I look forward to leaving fantasy behind and keeping a grip on reality, with all my thoughts and feelings intact. I’ve never been as close to or further from reality than I have in the past six months of loneliness and misery. I learned the hard way when my ideals collided with reality, but each exists for a reason, and at least I now know why.
In confronting my desires, I felt sorrow and regret over my former, unrealistic ways of thinking, but I was also moved and inspired. After having come so close to ending my life, I came back, my will to live completely reawakened. I faced reality, where I would learn to live again, this time boldly and fearlessly. My body was screaming at me, telling me that life was a gift. The agony of the past few years, like the conflict between the real me and the one everyone knew, is gone. I even feel a little sorry for my old self, so feeble and self-pitying. It seems I’ve finally come around to living the life I’ve always dreamed of.
3
After that perilous night, I went on living in the room next to Xiao Fan’s. She always brought work home. Every morning, she’d drag herself out of bed, exhausted, then open my door a crack and peek in. I’d open my eyes to greet her. She’d come in and sit on my bed, and we’d goof around like little kids. I’d put on a wake-up song (like Don McLean’s “American Pie” or Dan Fogelberg’s “Leader of the Band”) and stretch, while she’d pour herself a glass of milk and make me a cup of coffee. Then we’d sit down at our little dining table and eat breakfast. As she read the paper, I’d sit there and interrupt her, asking random questions. She had to keep up with the news for her job, and I’d try to make her laugh so she couldn’t get any reading done.
She normally wore contact lenses, which made her look sober and aloof. Breakfast was the only time she ever wore her thick-framed glasses. Behind the lenses, her eyes were two tiny dots. She looked endearingly simple and honest. The best was when I could tell that she found my teasing funny and annoying at the same time. On those occasions, she lived purely in the moment, which made me happier than words could ever describe.
Then she’d head to her room to get ready. She was like a freewheeling bachelor who was being forced to masquerade as a woman, and her brilliant execution of a feminine style didn’t stop her from making fun of her own clothes and makeup. Once, while wearing an evening gown to a cocktail party with her boss, she stepped on the skirt and tripped as the two of them were dancing. She laughed about it the whole way home, then boasted to me afterward. Like me, she could be flippant about appearances. But she just didn’t give a damn how she looked, and in that respect, she was ballsier than I was.
I’d sit on the carpet in my bedroom, smoking in silence as I waited for her to leave her room, transformed into a woman who fit in. Suddenly, the chasm between my reality and hers would become painfully apparent. Then, as if she didn’t want me to see her in such a state, she’d slip out the door.
My ear was constantly up against the wall of her room, listening for any movement—the phone ringing when she and her fiancé made a date, her light footsteps, the sound of her gingerly closing the door. Day after day, I’d hear the door shut, and I’d be separated from her anew. She slipped into another dimension that I had no
connection to, one in which she belonged to this other man.
As I drifted off to sleep, I’d hear a key being inserted into the front door lock and turned. The sound would trickle into my dreams, waking me. Like a goalkeeper, I knew instantaneously if she’d made it into the entryway. From the time she left the house to the end of the day, I sat in the dark, waiting for her. Apart from the few classes I couldn’t skip, or when I absolutely had to go out, I spent most of my time at home. My once hectic social life ground to a halt. I ended my complicated, dodgy relationships with various men. I didn’t do anything except sleep, then sleep more. I didn’t even read books. The dormancy made me restless, and I put all my energy into writing in my journal. Whether I was sitting or running around or lying down, my mind was filled with things I wanted to talk to Xiao Fan about. In my heart, I talked to her all day long. The sheer volume of these conversations was too much to contain. They were practically oozing out of me, incapacitating me. My body had entered overproduction mode. Its mostly unsaleable products were piled in a warehouse, and the warehouse soon had to be demolished.
My long slumber came to an end when the sound of the key rescued me. I sat up straight in bed, then crept over to the door, peeping out through a crack. It was easy to tell whether she was in a good or bad mood that day. When she was in a bad mood, she’d stand at the shoe rack grimacing before forcing a vague smile in my direction. That was her way of preparing to unleash the trials of her day. Then, from behind that shrewd, capable exterior emerged a pure innocence. She had the face of a ten-year-old girl, it was that adorable. Xiao Fan was so thin that her cheeks were sunken, but whenever she smiled, her dimples would appear. I often had an overwhelming urge to pick her up and give her a big squeeze. She was so angelic that I’d forget she was five years older than me, and engaged.
